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  <title>CENTERS - US-CHINA PS-OA</title>
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    <a href="#overview" class="bookmarks">Overview</a>|
    <a href="#investigators" class="bookmarks">Investigators</a>|
    <a href="#projects" class="bookmarks">Projects</a>|
    <a href="#relevant links" class="bookmarks">Relevant Links</a>|
    <a href="#gallery" class="bookmarks">Gallery</a>
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      <p class="paragraph_title"><a name="overview">OVERVIEW</a></p>
      <p class="paragraph_intro">Center Summary</p>
      <p class="paragraph_text">Arizona State University Physical Sciences-Oncology Center's (ASU PS-OC) foremost aim is to rigorously question the central tenets of cancer biology and to innovate paradigm shifting tactics that challenge the barriers of contemporary cancer research and treatments. These investigators hypothesize that cancer progression is linked to systematic physical differences in cells. Pioneering methods to survey these physical changes will be employed by this center, and theoretical evolutionary models will also be applied to establish the evolution of a metastatic cancer cell from a physical context. Moreover, the strategic partnership of distinguished scientists in cancer biology, clinical oncology and physics will lend to the technical advances introduced from this center. Along this line, these investigators have spearheaded single-cell tomography, which has isotropic 100 nm resolution and enables three-dimensional imaging of single cells. This center will use single-cell computerized tomography to characterize physical changes as potential cancer signatures.</p>
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      <p class="paragraph_title"><a name="investigators">INVESTIGATORS</a></p>
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        <p class="investigators_text_intro">Paul Davies, Ph.D.</p>
        <p class="investigators_text_text">Paul Davies is Director of The Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University. He is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist with research experience ranging from the origin of the universe to the origin of life. He is noted for his work on the theory of quantum ﬁelds in curved spacetime, the thermodynamics of black holes, early-universe cosmology, the arrow of time, the nature of the laws of physics and the emergence of life in the universe.</p>
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      <p class="paragraph_title"><a name="projects">PROJECTS</a></p>
      <p class="paragraph_text">Arizona State University Physical Sciences-Oncology Center's (ASU PS-OC) foremost aim is to rigorously question the central tenets of cancer biology and to innovate paradigm shifting tactics that challenge the barriers of contemporary cancer research and treatments. These investigators hypothesize that cancer progression is linked to systematic physical differences in cells. Pioneering methods to survey these physical changes will be employed by this center, and theoretical evolutionary models will also be applied to establish the evolution of a metastatic cancer cell from a physical context. Moreover, the strategic partnership of distinguished scientists in cancer biology, clinical oncology and physics will lend to the technical advances introduced from this center. Along this line, these investigators have spearheaded single-cell tomography, which has isotropic 100 nm resolution and enables three-dimensional imaging of single cells. This center will use single-cell computerized tomography to characterize physical changes as potential cancer signatures.</p>
      <p class="paragraph_intro">Project 1 - Quantitative Mechanical Nanotomography of Cells Embedded in 3D-Matrices</p>
      <p class="paragraph_intro">Robert Ros(Arizona State University)</p>
      <p>Arizona State University Physical Sciences-Oncology Center's (ASU PS-OC) foremost aim is to rigorously question the central tenets of cancer biology and to innovate paradigm shifting tactics that challenge the barriers of contemporary cancer research and treatments. These investigators hypothesize that cancer progression is linked to systematic physical differences in cells. Pioneering methods to survey these physical changes will be employed by this center, and theoretical evolutionary models will also be applied to establish the evolution of a metastatic cancer cell from a physical context. Moreover, the strategic partnership of distinguished scientists in cancer biology, clinical oncology and physics will lend to the technical advances introduced from this center. Along this line, these investigators have spearheaded single-cell tomography, which has isotropic 100 nm resolution and enables three-dimensional imaging of single cells. This center will use single-cell computerized tomography to characterize physical changes as potential cancer signatures.</p>
      <p class="paragraph_intro">Project 2 - Probing the Physical Properties of Nucleosomes during Cancer Progression</p>
      <p class="paragraph_intro">Project Leader: Steven Henikoff (The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) </p>
      <p>This project will characterize the cancer cell lines and tissues common to the Center using newly developed single-molecule tools, together with new methods for chromatin fractionation based on physical properties of mononucleosomes and arrays, to probe chromatin and epigenetic changes in cancer. We propose that gene silencing occurs because DNA methylation and other epigenetic modiﬁcations interfere with incorporation or properties of the universal histone variant, H2A.Z. Our project will apply atomic force microscopy (AFM) and recognition imaging technologies that we have recently used to characterize single native chromatin particles containing the CenH3 histone variant in an ongoing ASU-Hutch collaboration.</p>
      <p class="projects_img"><img src="../img/centers/2.png"></p>
      <p class="paragraph_intro">Project 3 - Single Cell Physiology and 3D Tomography</p>
      <p class="paragraph_intro">Project Leader: Deirdre Meldrum (Arizona State University)</p>
      <p>This project applies two novel technologies to quantify cancer cell phenotypes using cell lines and cells disaggregated from human biopsies. The ﬁrst novel technology is a hermetically-sealed microenvironmental chamber that allows respiration rate and ion flux measurements; the second is an optical CT scanner for 3D cell imaging that facilitates extraction of nuclear morphometric features. We will correlate physiological and morphometric variables with transcription proﬁles measured using quantitative Reverse Transcriptase-PCR, and seek to understand relationships between our measurements and our sister projects on chromatin structure and cell mechanical properties.</p>
      <p class="projects_img"><img src="../img/centers/3.png"></p>
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      <p class="paragraph_title"><a name="relevant links">RELEVANT LINKS</a></p>
      <p><a href="http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/category/workshops/">http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/category/workshops/</a></p>
      <p>Our workshops bring scientists of diverse ﬁelds together to contemplate many aspects of cancer. Each workshop has its own webpage, where one can ﬁnd recorded interviews with the participants, transcripts of those interviews, recorded summaries of the talks and pictures.</p>
      <p><a href="http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/seminars/">http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/seminars/</a></p>
      <p>Every other Thursday the ASU PS-OC holds seminars in the Biodesign Auditorium. This page offers a listing of past and upcoming seminars as well as links to the recordings of past seminars and links to the live webcast feed of upcoming seminars.</p>
      <p><a href="http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/category/spotlight-videos/">http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/category/spotlight-videos/</a></p>
      <p>These spotlight videos focus in on our projects and the kinds of tools we use to research the roots of cancer. Tasks like studying epigenetic control and differentiating normal from cancerous cells are implemented through a physics approach. Videos include the projects of Stuart Lindsay, Robert Ros and Tim Newman.</p>
      <p><a href="http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/2010/09/listen-to-a-feature-about-the-philosophy-of-our-research-program-broadcast-by-tom-ﬁelden-of-bbc- radio-4-today-program/">http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/2010/09/listen-to-a-feature-about-the-philosophy-of-our-research-program-broadcast-by-tom-ﬁelden-of-bbc- radio-4-today-program/</a></p>
      <p>Science correspondent Tom Feilden reports on the new approach to cancer research pioneered by scientists at Arizona State University. Tom interviewed both Paul Davies, Director of The Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Roger Johnson, Research Scientist at the Center for Biosignatures Discovery Automation at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.</p>
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      <p class="paragraph_title"><a name="gallery">GALLERY</a></p>
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